Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Are drugs harmful for the environment?

11.06.2003

Medicines released into the environment may be a risk to living species in the long term. Jeanne Garric’s ecotoxicology team at Cemagref Lyon has shown that certain molecules disrupt reproduction, embryo development and growth of representative organisms in aquatic environments. Toxicity tests have been conducted in the laboratory on Daphnia, Rotifera and zebra fish under standard protocols. Active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs) concentrations in the environment however are found to be 1000 to 100,000 times too low to cause acute toxicity.

Cemagref scientists have tested a dozen of the most widely used APIs in France and Europe, covering a wide spectrum of molecular diversity. The research was carried out as part of the European Rempharmawater research programme and French Enimed programme under the PNETOX national ecotoxicology programme funded by the environment ministry.

In France and Europe as a whole, most drugs swallowed end up in rivers after passing through a wastewater treatment station. Any drug not entirely broken down will reach surface waters. For this reason degradability and biodegradability in STP and receiving ecosystem is one of the important key parameters to understand for the risk assessment of such APIs.. But even in small amounts, a drug, may have toxic effects. Very low concentrations of the some b-blockers, in surface waters may affect invertebrate reproduction.

Answering questions as to the environmental impact of medicines has become vitally important, in terms of sustainable development. Mutual interactions between different drugs and their effects on sediments also needs investigating. This is a major challenge, because a continuous stream of such molecules are pouring into the environment.

Die letzten 5 Focus-News des innovations-reports im Überblick:

Whether you call it effervescent, fizzy, or sparkling, carbonated water is making a comeback as a beverage. Aside from quenching thirst, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new use for these "bubbly" concoctions that will have major impact on the manufacturer of the world's thinnest, flattest, and one most useful materials -- graphene.

As graphene's popularity grows as an advanced "wonder" material, the speed and quality at which it can be manufactured will be paramount. With that in mind,...

Physicists at the University of Bonn have managed to create optical hollows and more complex patterns into which the light of a Bose-Einstein condensate flows. The creation of such highly low-loss structures for light is a prerequisite for complex light circuits, such as for quantum information processing for a new generation of computers. The researchers are now presenting their results in the journal Nature Photonics.

Light particles (photons) occur as tiny, indivisible portions. Many thousands of these light portions can be merged to form a single super-photon if they are...

For the first time, scientists have shown that circular RNA is linked to brain function. When a RNA molecule called Cdr1as was deleted from the genome of mice, the animals had problems filtering out unnecessary information – like patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.

While hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant in mammalian brains, one big question has remained unanswered: What are they actually good for? In the...

A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the coexistence of superconductivity and “charge-density-waves” in compounds of the poorly-studied family of bismuthates. This observation opens up new perspectives for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, a topic which is at the core of condensed matter research since more than 30 years. The paper by Nicoletti et al has been published in the PNAS.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, superconductivity had been observed in some metals at temperatures only a few degrees above the absolute zero (minus...